Aristotle called for an end to "binary, adversarial debate" around people smuggling so that Australians could consider the long-term mental health consequences of detention.
Most important, it should summon special attorneys to test the government's secret evidence in every case, so that a full court hears a genuine adversarial debate before intruding on a citizen's civil rights.
For example, a degree of adversarial debate is healthy and can be constructive but the current system seems to encourage knee-jerk oppositionism and discourage either consensus or reflection.
Speaking as a witness during the first public hearings into the Snowden revelations, Judge Robertson said that without an adversarial debate the courts should not be expected to create a secret body of law that authorised such broad surveillance programmes.
Judge Robertson, who served on the national security court that oversees government surveillance from 2002 until resigning in December 2005, also criticized the surveillance court system because only the government generally submits filings to it, so judges do not benefit from adversarial debate.
Historical evidence suggests that a divide between Eastern and Occidental thinking has existed at least since ancient times, a tradition of adversarial debate, formal logical argument and analytic deduction flowering in Greece, while in China an appreciation for context and complexity, dialectical argument and a tolerance for the "yin and yang" of life flourished.
Consensus decision making involves a collaborative discussion, rather than an adversarial debate.
The conception of the building has been singled out for praise, particularly in the way it re-establishes Scotland's traditional focus towards mainland Europe and its values by means of the layout of the non-adversarial debating chamber and the creation of the public spaces in front of the building, "where people can meet and express themselves as a force".
He suggests that black politicians could soon be forced to take a more adversarial position in debates over immigration and predicts that the rising hostility "portends problems for the Democratic Party".
